Featured Articles and Journals: Ethan Nichtern

My mom recently heard about an organization that grants senior citizens' wishes, like those groups that send terminally ill children and their families to Disney World, but this was for regular seniors with no special issues. This led her to think...

Today, March 12, is the 25th anniversary of the day that Tim Boerners-Lee presented his vision for a way to connect all the computers in the world. At that time, he says, he called it "mesh." He came up with World Wide Web in 1990 when he began...

The current issue of Time magazine promotes coverage of "The Mindful Revolution: The science of finding focus in a stressed-out, multitasking culture."
The story itself is behind a paywall -- you can read the opening anecdote about the author...

At the start of last night's awesome group for the "Finding Your Path " class series, I mentioned how frequently it now happens that a note appears in my various feeds, linking to new scientific research demonstrating the positive effects of various...

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Here are four very simple tips for turning your dabbling, on and off, casual, swinging, it-loves-me-it-loves-me-not relationship with meditation into a daily practice that...

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Let's face it, sometimes the holidays just…suck. Maybe that's not the most Buddhist way of saying it, but it is how it feels. Even more than in past years,...

Dear IDPeeps near and far,
On behalf of the IDP Blog, we hope you had a splendid summer! A lot has been going on here at the Interdependence Project. We'll just name a few highlights, because if we mentioned them all, you'd be here all day:

Welcome to IDP's Metta Month, where members of the community commit to practicing metta (lovingkindness) every day in August. That means sending out good wishes to yourself, your loved ones, and the world at large.
What's in it for you?

I enjoy visiting New York City, a city famed for its cynicism. In fact, being a New Yorker is largely equated with being a cynic. Cynicism is not confined to one group of people, however. In fact, it often seems that cynicism is...

In this week's installment of the online-only class on Buddhist basics, Ethan Nichtern and Sharon Salzberg talk about the importance of the view. The Buddha included Right View as the first factor on the Eight-fold Path to liberation from suffering.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche has just published his fourth major book, The Shambhala Principle, and I’ve been lucky enough to spend a good deal of time reading and rereading my now-wrinkled advanced readers’ copy over the past few...

Membership month at IDP is winding down -- although, really, you can join at any time during the year -- so I wanted to take advantage of the space that I get on the blog every week to share why I'm a member and encourage you to join up.

On a day of insanity and horror, one of the most heartwarming things for me was reading this passage in comedian Patton Oswalt's Facebook post about the Boston Marathon tragedy, which went viral on the social network:

Many friends and I have all checked out this great smartphone app called Insight Timer, which lets you keep really good track of meditation sessions and connect with other meditators around the world. IDP has several online...

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Big News: A new study from the University of Toronto claims that meditation makes individuals more politically liberal in their outlook and actions. Although it...

On Valentine's Day, Facebook asked me if I wanted to send my spouse "a real Facebook gift." What does that mean? I asked myself (and then my Facebook friends -- who are almost real world friends). Does a "real" Facebook gift exist offline, ie IRL?...

Last year, I posted the below article to the IDP blog, at the conclusion of my participation in our first year-long Immersion Training program. Since then, my path has continued to unfold before me and reveal itself in ways obvious and...

Yesterday I donated $25 to Rolling Jubilee, which is the latest interesting project by the Occupy Movement. The project, operates as a compassionate debt relief system, which in its own words:
"buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead...

Here are the top 10 things I learned in the two craziest weeks of 2012. May all experience lead to insight, and may all insight lead to skillful means. And may all skillful means lead to an end of suffering, and may that lead to all sentient beings...

Oh, Chris Rock, I bow to you. A friend of mine was recently dating a stand-up comedian, and we were talking about the similarities between teaching Buddhism and stand-up, at least when teaching in a group. Sometimes it definitely feels like giving a...